Born in the first half of the last century, Roland Trenary has parlayed his modest Midwest upbringing into a modest 21st Century adventure.

He is creator of seven issues of the magazine Normal Bean, one acoustic album of self-penned/performed songs (Fever That Yearns), and several music-related videos on Youtube.

With over forty years of researching and collecting the artist Mahlon Blaine, he has gathered together Blaine’s definitive biography and bibliography (Mahlon Blaine ~ One-Eyed Visionary).

His novel of illustration adventure (Mahlon Blaine’s Blooming Bally Bloody Book) is on the Amazon charts, while he also continues to pursue an even newer career as a quick-sketch artist specializing in actors and musicians caught in the act of performing.

For the past several decades he has steadfastly maintained that his role as The King (in the Lincoln School 4th Grade production of the musical Rumplestiltskin) may have been his undoing.

This has yet to be proven.



Amazon Reviews

“This is an entertaining and very well-written story of the life of a character told by and about the characters in his life. Each chapter reads like a charming vignette, a titillating peek into the world of the artist Mahlon Blaine. I listened to the audio version and it was like having the guy or gal on the next barstool relating a tale of their adventures with Mahlon. Both his art and his life were fantastical. Trenary does a great job of filling in the details.”
“Fascinating story wrapped around a lesser known illustrator. Well written and illustrated with many of the illustrations from the artist.”
“Where the recent Brian Hunt book is almost all the pictures that Mahlon Blaine was famous for, this one has an excellent selection of artwork (including many pieces I had never seen even though I have been collecting books with Mahlon Blaine art for decades) but also a great deal of very well-written text about Blaine and his era and career. “